LOS ANGELES (KPIX) — On the second Sunday in May, many in the U.S. celebrate Mother’s Day. The day honors motherhood, maternal bonds, and the importance and influence of mothers everywhere.

On this Mother’s Day, I have another reason I’ll hug my mother even tighter.

Not too long ago, I took a walk through a rose garden with my mother, Bonnie Cook, and wondered: “How often do you get to stop and smell the roses with your mom?” These days, nothing can be sweeter than spending more time with her.

From the moment I was born, I’ve felt her mom’s unconditional love. But recently, I felt fear after getting a terrifying phone call. My mom had suffered an accident.

Outside a parking garage in downtown Los Angeles, an old tree had buckled the sidewalk, cracking and pushing up a concrete slab. As my mother walked by, her foot got caught on the slab and she tripped, hitting the sidewalk quite hard.

“It was a beautiful day and I wasn’t really paying attention,” she said later. “So I hit the pavement really hard and I knew at that moment that I broke my arm.”

She had broke two bones in her forearm and needed surgery. That’s when her story took an unexpected turn. A routine pre-op chest x-ray revealed a barely noticeable spot on her lung.

It turns out that that spot was lung cancer

But because she took that fall, the x-ray detected a lung cancer that was at the earliest, most curable stage.

“Most of the time lung cancer is a silent disease and by the time you start to have symptoms – not all the time – but by the time you start to have symptoms that can be a harbinger that the disease is pretty far advanced,” he said.

Dr. Kim operated on my mom and took out a part of her lung that contained a marble-sized tumor. She won’t need radiation or chemotherapy and her prognosis is good.

“Right now, we have no reason to believe that she will have a recurrence, but, you know – knock on wood,” said Dr. Kim.

My mom will be followed closely for a few years with regular checkups. She plans to spend more time with her first grandchild, my son Beau.

On this Mother’s Day, that makes all us Cooks breathe a little easier.

Not everyone has such good fortune to take a bad fall and get an early diagnosis. The American Cancer Society recommends tests to check for lung cancer in people who are at high risk for lung cancer due to cigarette smoking.

That trip and fall was VERY lucky! I lost my lifelong nonsmoker mom to lung cancer at age 66 because she had no symptoms until it had metastasized. I still miss her, ALL the time. Doctors told her, too, about this unexplained phenomenon of nonsmoking women getting lung cancer. I believe the cause may be environmental.